The Pop Up Flea: Voice of Dissent

You my be wondering, what with all the hype I threw at my trip to New York over this last weekend, it took me until late Monday evening to post my thoughts and reactions of the second Pop Up Flea, brainchild of Michael Williams of A Continuous Lean fame, and friends. The answer is simple: I didn't want to come off sounding like some provincial New York hating Bostonian, so I decided to sleep on it, and gather my thoughts, the better to choose my words wisely. This post may contain a fair bit of vitriol, nonetheless.

The Internet is already a-twitter with rhapsodic ravings on the matter, and there are, no doubt, more still to come. So in the interest of democracy, I will speak in the voice of dissent: Pop Up Flea just wasn't "all that" ( as the kids were saying when I was still a kid). I didn't snap a single photo, because, frankly, we've seen everything they had on offer over and over ad nauseam for at least a year now. You know the scene by now: overpriced boutique-issue "heritage Americana"...read, replications of poor peoples clothes at rich peoples prices.

I get it, but I don't. Sure, there's beauty to be found in a well made piece of hard wearing, rugged clothing, but something about "designers" trying to sell me a wool flannel shirt for hundreds of dollars in a "trim cut" just rubs me the wrong way. How can you call this "design"? These things have existed for a century. Perfect replication at a high ticket is not design...its a marketing and p.r. game....which should come as no surprise, since the vast majority of the "too cool for school" hipster NYC blog clique has clearly been acting as a p.r. firm for the brands that produce this stuff since at least mid-Summer.

Every table at the thing had the same "look", which generally consisted of:

-gourmet work boots

-gourmet wool flannel

-gourmet raw denim jeans

-gourmet "tool bags" (?) (My friend Pasquale, a stylish gent and carpenter by trade, was particularly infuriated by a display of a natural canvas bag with leather fittings full of hammers, a tape measure, nails, etc...as though any of these high rise office kids would actually carry tools in the thing, let alone build anything with them.)

-gourmet frontier leather goods.....if I want gourmet leather, it's Gucci all the way, or something.

-gourmet old fashioned pencils (seriously ?)

Everything came in gingham check...Gitman Brothers was selling gourmet oxfords for $185, but they came sized S,M, L. For that kind of scratch, can I please have a neck size and sleeve length (!)

We were there for about a half an hour, before we had figured out what was up and left in mild disgust. Not for nothing, but where I come from, this ain't what we calla "Flea Market". Maybe I don't "get it". Cripes, J. Crew had a table...

My other old buddy, who lives in Brooklyn, made an especially good point. To para-phrase: "this is just the new Fall line of a bunch of places within a three block radius of here...at full retail. Whats the point?"

Indeed.

But, I had a great time visiting some very old and dear friends. I ate well, bought some killing jams at Bleecker Street Records,(look for an installment of "the jams"coming soon), and drank a bunch. Don't take me for all sour grapes, because I really had a great time. The only bump in the road was the 1/2 hour we wasted at Pop Up Flea.

The Great and Powerful Voice of Dissent Has Spoken.